1st Day Teaching

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Carlos (one of the TAPA coordinators) turned up at the house at 8.30 to introduce me to the school. I'll be teaching in the local secondary school in Ollantay. There are about 400 students and 20 or so teachers. I was introduced to Angella... she's the Peruvian English teacher at the school. She speaks fairly intermediate English... although it's very good for round here.

Carlos took the first class, on "to be" with the younger students. After he'd left, I took the same lesson with the next class. Later on I transitioned on to doing a lesson on Sports and Games. Which the kids find a bit more of an interesting subject. I'm hoping to keep the teaching to subjects of interest for a while and use this to develop conversation, and teach sentence structure.

The school isn't very well off, but they have the essentials (desks, chairs, black-board). The buildings are mostly concrete, they have a couple of playgrounds, and field out the back. There're good views of the mountains all around.

My lack of Spanish wasn't as much of a problem as I'd thought it might be. Angella can translate my explanations where necessary... and most of the time, gestures and examples are enough to make myself understood.

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